


Winter in store for every leaf

by Walutahanga



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Difficult Decisions, F/M, Force Visions, Force-Sensitive Jyn Erso, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Imperial Jyn Erso, Jedi Lyra Erso, Mentioned Galen Erso - Freeform, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Sith Jyn Erso, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 21:22:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12329136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Walutahanga/pseuds/Walutahanga
Summary: The two tragic futures of Jyn Erso.(Major spoilers for Rogue One and the Legends EU.)





	Winter in store for every leaf

**Author's Note:**

> So you know how Jyn's mother was a Jedi in the original plans for the movie. What if she was still a Jedi in the final version. Why would she have let herself get killed so easily, by Krennick of all people? It wouldn't be the first time a Jedi sacrificed themselves for a higher goal, but what exactly was she trying to achieve? Or prevent?
> 
> Also, fair warning; this does take place partially in the Legends EU, but I've done my best to make sure there's no required reading. All you need to know is, Jyn doesn't get a happy ending in either world.

Jyn dies at the end. 

This is no surprise. 

In this life, the only question is _how_ you die and _why_. 

* * *

Back at the Temple, Lyra's Master used to say death is not the worst thing that could happen. One also has to look past that death and see the consequences unfolding from it. Or from life, should that be the case. Many beings had trouble seeing that.

The concept certainly troubled Lyra, being one of the reasons she exchanged her Padawan braid for marriage to a brilliant young scientist.

Her lightsabre, however, she keeps. This is part sentimentality and part practicality. Kyber crystals attune themselves to their owners and while a Jedi might seize another's blade in the desperation of battle, they'd never consider keeping it. It's too much like carrying a piece of someone else's soul.

So Lyra keeps her lightsabre. She hides it when the Clone Wars end and the Jedi become fugitives. (Her name is removed from the lists, because Krennick at that point still prefers bribery to blackmail and is squeamish enough to dislike blood on his hands). She smuggles it off-world when she and Galen flee the Empire with their daughter and on Lah'mu she hides it behind a secret wall panel above their bed.

It stays there until Krennick comes for them and she kills him and his security team with the gleaming blue blade of an outlawed religion. Her family flees again, but it's too late. They've been marked.

The next person to come for them isn't an overly-ambitious bureaucrat or fumbling administrator. It's a monster in black armour, soaked in the blood of Lyra's kin. He murders Lyra as casually as crushing an insect and hands her husband over to Tarkin, who has neither Krennick's narrow-mindedness nor his previous relationship with Galen to blind him. Their daughter goes to the Inquisitors, and that is the last anyone ever knows of Jyn Erso. 

The Inquisitors burn that name away. 

They burn away the face of her father and mother, and the sound of their names.

They burn away what it felt like to be loved more than anything else in the galaxy.

All they leave is a vague dissatisfaction that things are not as they should be. She decides, as most do, that this is because she's at the bottom of the ladder, not the top. So she works her way up.

She runs missions for the Inquisitors. When her success rate is noted at the tender age of sixteen, she becomes one of a handful of elite agents working directly for the Emperor. She's not even twenty when she's summoned to execute a man who tried to smuggle the Death Star plans to the Rebellion. She looks him in the eye and doesn't recognise his face even when he whispers "Stardust". It doesn't mean anything. It _can't_.

(Tarkin kept his word to Galen Erso; he saw his daughter one last time.)

By the time she's sent to seduce and murder Luke Skywalker, the girl that was once Jyn Erso can no longer recognize escape. She can barely comprehend the concept. She doesn't understand why the Force keeps whispering that Skywalker is the answer. By killing him she hopes to become the Emperor's favourite, supplanting that bitch Jade and maybe even oneday Vader. 

It doesn't work out that way. She spends the rest of her life trying to get back at Skywalker and eventually succeeds with his nephew. 

Sith Lord Lumiya dies under a Jedi blade, far too late to stop the galaxy burning.

* * *

Or this. 

One night, not long after they arrive on Lah'mu, Lyra wakes gasping from a nightmare. Galen holds her as she weeps.

"Was it a memory?" He asks gently.

It takes a moment for her to respond, her head tucked under his chin so he can't see her face. "A vision."

"Of the future?"

A pause. "No. Not ours."

She never does tell him what she saw. He does not ask. There are some things - Jedi matters - that they do not speak of. Taboos that even love cannot break. He assumes this is one of them.

The next morning Lyra disassembles her lightsabre. She puts the kyber crystal on a necklace and wears it everyday for the rest of her life.

On the last day of her life, she puts it about her daughter's neck and tells her to run. When she attacks Krennick, it's with a blaster and she takes care to fire just a few inches above anything vital. She dies another faceless victim of the Empire. No one important. No one that Vader or the Emperor would notice or care about. Galen is dragged away by Krennick, who will only ever see what he wants to see.

Jyn Erso disappears, an irrelevance that the Empire won't see coming for another decade. 

Jyn will lead a hard life. She'll be a fugitive, a criminal, and a terrorist. In the last days of her life she'll become a rebel. But she'll know her own name and she'll carry her mother's soul with her. In the quiet moments, before sleeping and waking, she'll feel the press of a kiss on her forehead, the warmth of a hand in hers; the memory of what it felt like to be loved more than anything else in the galaxy. She'll remember her father's face, so that when he dies in her arms whispering "Stardust" it means everything.

She'll die young, decades before her time. She'll never consciously wield the Force or fall in love or see the Empire fall. But she'll never know the dark side or murder on the behest of a monster or waste her life on revenge. If the galaxy does burn, it won't be her doing.

* * *

In this life, the only question is how you die and why.

Jyn Erso dies a hero, in the arms of a friend.

It's better this way. 

**Author's Note:**

> Many apologies to Eaven Boland, in particular for her poem 'Pomegranate' that I borrowed the title from. It's beautiful work, about a mother reflecting on the impossibility of protecting her daughter from the world.


End file.
